CONTRIBUTE

30 June 2012

The presidential candidate for Mexico's ruling conservative party has said she'd invite President Felipe Calderon to be attorney general if she won Sunday's vote, a surprise proposal made in the final hours of campaigning.

National Action Party candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota, the first female presidential hopeful from a major party in Mexico, made the pitch Wednesday at her closing campaign event in Jalisco state (link in Spanish).

"I want someone who will defend your children ... who is not afraid," Vazquez Mota told supporters at the Omnilife stadium in Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara. "That is why I want to say here in Jalisco, with total conviction, that upon winning the presidency of Mexico I will invite President Calderon to head the attorney general's office."

"He is a brave man. He is a resolute man. He is a man who has risked his own life and the lives of his family," Vazquez Mota said.

There was no immediate response from the Calderon administration, which has conducted a controversial military-led war against drug traffickers, nor elaboration from Vazquez Mota's team. Under Mexican law, campaigns were required to shut down Wednesday night in order to give "reflection time" to voters before Sunday's voting.

Polls show Lopez Obrador in second place. He and Vazquez Mota appear to be splitting votes of residents who oppose the return to power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which lost in 2000 after 71 years in power.

PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto is leading most recent polls by at least 12 points over Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City and runner-up in Mexico's disputed 2006 presidential election. Vazquez Mota has slipped to third in most polls since the start of her campaign.

The announcement confounded observers. For one thing, Calderon and Vazquez Mota are not close.

Although she served as education secretary early in Calderon's administration and ran his 2006 campaign, Vazquez Mota has struggled to define her campaign's relationship with the president and his allies within the party, known as the PAN. Her campaign slogan is "Different," but she was forced to bring on Calderon insiders to steer her campaign after early missteps, gaffes, and a near-fainting incident.

Wednesday's unexpected move might have been a deliberate political calculation. A poll released June 20 by the Pew Global Attitudes Project said Calderon has a 58% approval rating, and that a majority of Mexicans still approve of his use of the military against drug lords.

In recent days, supporters of both non-PRI candidates have debated on social media whether PAN followers should cast their votes for Lopez Obrador in a so-called voto util against the PRI.

The 2012 campaign has also been marked by large-scale grass-roots protests against the PRI's possible return to power, led by students organized in the #YoSoy132 movement. The students announced they would hold a candlelight march Saturday, the day before voting, to "save Mexico" and push for "clean elections."

On the last day of her campaign, Vazquez Mota told supporters she was ahead of Lopez Obrador and called the PRD candidate "the face of chaos and economic crisis" (link in Spanish). On the same night, Lopez Obrador drew hundreds of thousands of supporters for his last campaign speech in Mexico City's Zocalo square and on surrounding streets.

"There is more crime, there is less employment, the country is in bad shape," said Isabel Pacheco, 46, a Lopez Obrador supporter in the front row. "But the time for change has come."

* Photo: Mexican presidential candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota of the National Action Party waves during a rally in the Mexican city of Monterrey on Tuesday. Credit: Miguel Sierra / European Pressphoto Agency

29 June 2012

We’re now less than two weeks away from Mexico’s presidential election, and at this point, few people would have expected that the otherwise unsurprising democratic process of voting would be accompanied by scenes of rabble-rousing students chanting and singing along with mariachi bands outside the studios of Mexico’s leading television network.

These scenes, part of a nascent student movement known as #YoSoy132, are now becoming regular features on the nightly news in Mexico. Imagine that, young people protesting media bias and media manipulation by the thousands in a country with little precedent for such collective grievances against corporate big media.

A lot of people here are pretty excited with this development.

It all started on May 11, when candidate Enrique Peña Nieto visited the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City for what was supposed to be a friendly meet-and-greet with the student and academic community. Instead, over the course of his visit, Peña Nieto suffered a humiliating and disastrous few hours of abuse from what looked like a spontaneous student protest. It got messy.

Peña Nieto came for a normal campaign stop, to deliver a speech and answer questions before an auditorium. The thing was going nominally well until students who had managed to slip in protest signs past a security check could no longer contain themselves. According to video, photos, and accounts of the event, the shouting started after one lone guy with a poofy haircut and a lot of attitude stood up silently holding a hand-drawn sign that read simply, TE ODIO. “I hate you.”

The shouting and chanting grew. Peña Nieto sought an escape. More protesters were waiting for him outside.

The candidate with the movie-star looks and soap-opera star wife was chased through the halls and courtyards of “the Ibero” by choruses of “Murderer!” and “Coward!” as students protested his handling of a 2006 disputewith campesinos in the town of San Salvador Atenco during his term as a state governor. The shouting and chasing grew overwhelming. Peña Nieto hid briefly in a restroom with his team, trying to find a good way out. Video of the momentshows Peña’s eyes wide and hollow, his forehead tense, lips curled up with fear.

By the time it was all over, Peña Nieto was literally run off the Ibero campus. As he ducked into a dark SUV, one reporter managed to ask him what he thought of the protests against him. “It’s not genuine,” he responded with a meager smile, and took off. And with that, the 2012 Mexican presidential race—the race that Peña Nieto was supposed to win without breaking a sweat—took a major shift.

The Ibero incident put the Peña Nieto campaign in damage-control mode. The next day, suggestions that the demonstration was staged by outsiders was repeated by his campaign chief, a few sympathetic Ibero faculty, and just about every provincial and vaguely corrupt newspaper that implicitly supports Peña Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

This turned out to be an enormously foolish move. The students responded by uploading a video of 131 of them staring into their MacBook video cameras and repeating their names and their student ID numbers while flashing their Ibero ID cards. The PRI has spent many millions of dollars on its campaign to win Mexico’s presidency, but what followed was a media coup that no amount of cash or army of consultants could have stopped. Among Mexico’s active Twitter-verse, the hashtag soon appeared: #YoSoy132. “I am 132.”

It’s worth noting that this kind of brouhaha was very unexpected for Ibero. It is one of the swankiest schools in the country, the kind of place where a slick, media-savvy politician like Peña Nieto should normally be made to be feel right at home. Hell, the Ibero produces Peña Nietos. I know, because a lot of my friends are recent graduates. Even they were surprised by what happened on May 11, but not entirely. Any decent school always has room for progressive thought and action, and while the Ibero probably costs more per year than what millions of Mexicans make in an adult life, there was an undercurrent of “enough is enough” in the anti-Peña protest that seemed blind to class or social boundaries. By the following weekend, a classic grassroots social-media movement had taken off.

#YoSoy132 demonstrations broke first in Mexico City. Tens of thousands streamed through the central corridor and gathered at the Angel of Independence monument to make it known that they, too, were opposed to the PRI regaining power.

The party ruled the country for much of the 20thCentury until 2000 with a potent mix of strategies that ultimately boils down to power-by-any-means necessary. It has a widely documented history of vote-buying, fraud, collusion with drug traffickers, censorship, intimidation, election-stealing, and often fatal repression against dissidents—from the assassination of top party figures such as Luis Donaldo Colosioin 1994 to the outright massacres of student protesters in 1968and 1971. Peña Nieto says the PRI under his candidacy is a new party, and that his campaign should not be faulted for the party’s “errors” of the past.

In 2012, as the July 1 election day nears and the PRI remains ahead in the polls, the students aren’t having it.

#YoSoy132 demonstrations were also held in Monterrey, Guadalajara, Tijuana, Durango, Zacatecas, Tlaxcala, Aguascalientes, Veracruz, and many other cities in Mexico. Smaller protests in show of support of #YoSoy132 have also been reported among the wide Mexican diaspora in places like Chicago, Barcelona, Madrid, San Francisco, and before the White House in Washington, DC. Students at more than 35 universities and colleges across Mexico have joined the movement. What’s significant is that they’re forming a private- and public-university horizontal coalition that hasn’t been seen in Mexico with such force since the late 1960s. As thousands join their demonstrations, there’s a sense of collective dissent against the return of the so-called “dinosaurs” of the PRI, and collective disgust at the arguably biased role that the major media companies are playing in the process.

Now, this is not the Mexican Spring. It’s not a movement meant to topple the government. It’s actually stated a sort of incongruent political position: Against a presidential candidate but not in support of any other. For all we know, Peña Nieto has already won the 2012 election in Mexico. He’s about 15 points up; heart-on-his-sleeve leftie Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and incumbent party conservative Josefina Vazquez Mota, who’s all about keeping military on the streets against drug cartels, are so far splitting the anti-PRI vote.

Even if Lopez Obrador or Vazquez Mota pull off a wild upset in the end, #YoSoy132 will seek to keep the movement up, asking for media reform against the duopoly of Televisa and TV Azteca, which evidently represent an extension of the greater status quo in Mexico—all neatly symbolized by Peña and the PRI. Therefore, the natural questions are: Can it? Will it? Could it?

* Photo: Three high school friends at the Televisa studios protest on June 11, 2012, by Trevor Snapp. For more photos by Trevor Snapp on #YoSoy132, go here.

27 June 2012

Why is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador running for president of Mexico again after his politically damaging response to the 2006 election? Why isn't Marcelo Ebrard, the outgoing mayor of Mexico City, running for the leftist coalition instead?

For weeks, the question has popped up in the cocktail chatter of many residents of this progressive-leaning megacity.

As reported in The Times on Wednesday, dogged campaigner Lopez Obrador has moved up in polls but remains behind the front-runner with just days before voting.

In this scenario, gloom is rising among liberal Mexican voters who thought Ebrard would have been a more broadly appealing candidate for the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), and possibly even draw voters who might normally support the incumbent center-right National Action Party (PAN).

"Am I sad? A little. We all thought it would be Ebrard," said Javier Velazquez, 30, a Mexico City animator and filmmaker.

"Ebrard would have had the same power of Lopez Obrador but I think a lot of PAN people would have voted for Ebrard too," Velazquez said. "People who live in Mexico City know how Ebrard governs. The rich didn't get poor."

In 2010, he was named World Mayor by the City Mayors Foundation, an independent think tank.

In November, however, the mayor was unable to pull ahead of Lopez Obrador in an internal poll that the two agreed upon to determine who would be the PRD presidential candidate. Lopez Obrador had been campaigning since narrowly losing in 2006, and Ebrard had only recently begun to build a national profile. (For political junkies, the drama is detailed in an extensive profile on Ebrard in the current Gatopardo magazine, in Spanish.)

On the campaign trail this year, Lopez Obrador has attempted to bring Ebrard’s political capital along with him, but the effort is hampered by Mexico's strict electoral codes. Citizens serving in public office are not permitted to campaign; candidates formally resign from their posts in election seasons. A campaign spot that Ebrard recorded for Lopez Obrador was deemed illegal by the electoral tribunal and ordered off the air.

But Ebrard's absence also highlights the ideological distance that exists between the two men.

The candidate has said Ebrard would serve as his interior secretary if he wins the election, a crucial post that oversees major internal matters in Mexico. The suggestion raises a host of questions about how that relationship might actually operate.

In many ways, the two men represent opposite poles within the PRD, said Dag Mossige, a political scientist at Davidson College in North Carolina who is working on a history of the party.

Lopez Obrador, for example, has said while campaigning that he'd put the matter of same-sex marriage to a national referendum vote. The proposal is not only "absurd" and hostile to the protection of minority rights, Mossige said, but it would also put Lopez Obrador directly at odds with Ebrard's record on the issue. He legalized same-sex marriage in Mexico City in 2010.

The candidate proudly proclaims he never took a trip abroad while serving as Mexico City mayor, while Ebrard during his term has taken frequent trips on the international circuit, including an investment-seeking tour last year to Kuwait.

The front-runner to succeed Ebrard as mayor, PRD candidate Miguel Angel Mancera, has said he'd continue to govern Mexico City with an international focus. Mancera, a beneficiary of successful stints for both Lopez Obrador and Ebrard in city hall, looks to clobber opponents in Sunday's election by at least 40 percentage points.

"We have two major components in the PRD; one is a movement, it's all about winning the presidency, the cause," Mossige said, referring to Lopez Obrador's wing. "The other part is more European, it locates the party in an international context, where politics is about gradual negotiations, and they are quite more democratic than the other side."

26 June 2012

Mexico's presidential campaign entered the home stretch Monday, with less than a week left until voters cast ballots in a race that could return the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to power. The PRI ruled virtually unchallenged and often with a heavy hand for 71 years before losing the presidency in 2000.

The top three candidates crisscrossed the country over the weekend rallying thousands of supporters at huge events in the final days of official campaigning.

The PRI's poll-leading candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, on Sunday held a closing rally at the cavernous Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. Leftist coalition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, runner-up in the 2006 election, closed his campaign in the capitals of western states Nayarit and Jalisco.

Josefina Vazquez Mota of the incumbent National Action Party, or PAN, rallied supporters in the port city of Coatzacoalcos, in the state of Veracruz.

"I am not like the PRI candidate who has brought a foreigner to take care of our families," Vazquez Mota said, in reference to Peña Nieto's appointment of Gen. Oscar Naranjo of Colombia to be an external advisor in security matters if he wins.

Mexicans will vote Sunday, in balloting that will also pick senators and deputies in Congress and six governors in races that could similarly see gains for the PRI, polls show. The PAN could lose two states it currently governs, Morelos and Jalisco, which have seen increases in violence tied to the government's campaign against organized crime.

The #YoSoy 132 movement managed to organize Mexico's first non-official "citizens debate" online June 19, with three of four candidates. Peña Nieto declined to attend, saying he believed the movement opposed his candidacy.

Another large demonstration against Peña Nieto was held in the center of Mexico City on Sunday. But despite the protests, most polls still show him withstanding early fumbles and maintaining his lead.

Throughout the campaign, Peña Nieto, 45, has been forced to reassure observers of his credentials to govern. In December, he was unable to name three books that influenced his life, and allegations have surfaced during the campaign that a former PRI governor of the violence-plagued state of Tamaulipas, Tomas Yarrington, has ties to drug traffickers.

The PRI ruled the country from the end of the Mexican Revolution until it was voted out in 2000. Opponents fear its return could lead to authoritarian echoes of the past, such as repression and censorship.

Peña Nieto has campaigned on a message of inclusion, and has mostly refrained from attacking his opponents.

"I propose to the nation a plainly democratic presidency," he said Sunday. "I am part of a generation that has grown up with democracy and I aspire to be a president that governs by respecting liberties, listening to all and including the voices of everyone."

All three candidates have essentially similar security platforms, The Times reported Sunday, suggesting that the election is unlikely to reshape the drug war that has left more than 50,000 dead and scores missing in nearly six years.

Since 2000, two successive center-right governments under the PAN saw economic stability but few significant reforms. Drug-related violence has exploded since 2006. Vazquez Mota has dipped to third in some polls, in a sign of weariness with the results of the drug war.

On the left, charismatic populist Lopez Obrador remains at least 10 points behind Peña Nieto. He asked supporters Sunday to use social networks to "guard the vote" to avoid a repeat of the contested results in 2006, which saw him lose by 0.56 point.

"I want to clarify this so that no one will think it's a small thing we're looking for," Lopez Obrador said in Guadalajara. "It's not only about reaching a public office. What we want is to achieve the rebirth of Mexico."

Also on Sunday, at least 26 people died when a passenger bus plunged off a road in the southern state of Guerrero. The victims were identified as supporters of the Democratic Revolution Party who were headed to a campaign event to support a minor leftist party candidate for a local mayoral race.

22 June 2012

Here's an elderly man -- he seemed to be about 75 -- who is literaly crawling under a big rig truck to get one last glimpse of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador today in Tlaxcala, the tiny state in the antiplano north of Puebla.

As "AMLO" attempted to leave the closure of his campaign in this state, squeezing into his campaign minivan to head down to Veracruz, the customary chaos ensued. This truck stood in this man's way. Others were doing it, too. ... Why?

21 June 2012

MEXICO CITY -- Camila Vallejo broke into the international limelight in May 2011 as the beautiful revolutionary who led hundreds of thousands of student demonstrators in a call for education reform in Chile, toppling government ministers in the process.

She was, on the surface, an unlikely leader.

Just 23 at the time, the geography student dazzled the public early on with her statuesque features, shiny nose ring, and her soft, soothing manner of speaking. More alluringly, Vallejo was often inaccessible to the press, surrounded by student bodyguards.

Underneath the image, she was clearly exhibiting sharp political skills, both on the street among the droves of students and workers who managed to frequently shut down the capital of Santiago, and also in negotiations with the government of President Sebastian Piñera.

A year later, the students' demands for a freer, more equitable education system have made some progress against Piñera's initial response that higher education in economically prosperous Chile was "a consumer good."

Vallejo, now 24, has also reached a point at which she must decide what her next political role might be. Could a next step be toward the electoral arena in Chile?

Last week, Vallejo visited Mexico for the first time, to speak at a conference on higher education at a Mexico City university. The visit had been planned since late last year, explained a spokesman at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (known as UAM for its initials in Spanish), but by now Vallejo's presence in Mexico had acquired politically significant overtones.

Since mid-May, Mexico has witnessed demonstrations across the country expressing opposition to the possible return to power of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in the July 1 presidential election. The new student movement in Mexico, known as #YoSoy132, or "I Am 132," has won concessions from major newscasters and on Tuesday night organized an unofficial "citizen's debate," with all the presidential candidates except Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI.

Vallejo spent about three days in Mexico, speaking at the UAM's Xochimilco campus and meeting with members of #YoSoy132.

As the country bars foreigners from "participation" in politics, she made sure not to comment directly on Mexico's election. She also restrained from making any direct recommendations on #YoSoy132. "The students are their own advisors," Vallejo said at a news conference. "We're not here to intervene."

Despite the caution, she was treated like a rock star in liberal Mexico City.

UAM students clamored to reach out and greet her. At a public panel Saturday on a plaza near downtown, she was given bunches of flowers and greeted with shouts of "I love you!" from the crowds standing in the rain to hear her.

"What's happening here in Mexico and what's happening in Chile is that we're trying to repair the social fabric, organizing, mobilizing, so that we could more radically democratize our societies," Vallejo said in an interview with The Times on Friday.

"I believe the 'I Am 132' movement is in the same feeling," she added. "We are basically fighting for the same thing."

Her visit came at a moment of personal redefinition. In recent months, Vallejo may have seriously damaged her standing among less strident, more post-revolutionary young leftists in Latin America. She visited Cuba in April to attend the 50th anniversary of the Communist Youth Union, and apparently spoke approvingly about the Communist regime.

"If Camila Vallejo was born in Cuba, she'd be in prison or simply silenced by the mechanisms of power," said dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who sought unsuccessfully to meet Vallejo while she was in Havana (link in Spanish).

Vallejo has made no apologies for her affinity to Communist thought. She is the daughter of members of Chile's Communist Party and a member herself of the Communist Youth in Chile. With her charisma and political capital among Chilean society, some are beginning to wonder whether Vallejo would seek to further tilt Chile's current opposition more to the left, as a candidate of some sort for the Communist Party.

Speaking to The Times, she did not disavow the possibility.

"I think all the youth that have mobilized have a responsibility to assume a political role at the national level," she said. "We are going to fight until the end, and not just me, but many other new partisan militants who are young and want to build a social transformation."

"I will be there," she added, "and many other youth, social leaders, in that path."

* Photo: Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo is shown before delivering a speech during a meeting with Mexican students in the #Yosoy132 movement, at the Metropolitan Autonomus University in Mexico City on Friday. Credit: Alfredo Estrella / Agence-France Presse

20 June 2012

MEXICO CITY -- Former Gov. Enrique Peña Nieto, leading in polls to become Mexico's next president, has appointed the former chief of Colombia's national police to work as an "external advisor" for public security if he wins the July 1 election.

The appointment of Gen. Oscar Naranjo, announced Thursday, is read as a signal to observers in Mexico and the United States that Peña Nieto would make the pursuit of drug trafficking a high priority amid growing allegations that top members of his party have had ties to organized crime.

Peña Nieto maintains a steady lead in polls as candidate for the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. He called Colombia a model for success in the U.S.-backed fight against drug traffickers.

Naranjo, 55, is credited with helping take down top Colombian trafficker Pablo Escobar in 1993, as well as for recent successes to curtail coca production and battle the country's largest guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Both Mexico and Colombia are recipients of U.S. security aid.

As he introduced Naranjo, Peña Nieto said that if elected he would seek collaboration with the U.S. on security issues.

Naranjo told the Associated Press that he expects to be traveling regularly between Mexico City and Washington if Peña Nieto wins the election, hinting at closer ties with U.S. drug fighters if the PRI returns to power. It was voted out in 2000 after 71 years.

An official biography of Naranjo distributed to reporters lists him as an "honorary member" of the Drug Enforcement Administration, a point that rivals and political observers have latched on to in recent days.

"Unlike the PRI candidate, who trusts more in a foreigner than in our armed forces, I do trust in Mexico's soldiers," said Josefina Vazquez Mota, candidate of the ruling National Action Party, referring to the current government's military-led campaign against traffickers.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, running under the banner of a leftist coalition, said bringing in Naranjo would violate Mexico's Constitution, which he said prohibits foreigners' participation in national security matters in Mexico.

"What is basically evident here is that the [PRI] is also betting on the same policies of force," Lopez Obrador said.

On Thursday, Naranjo said he would work "non-operationally, outside of hierarchies" in a Peña Nieto administration.

19 June 2012

** Originally published in print in Metro, cross-posted with World, in the Los Angeles Times, Friday, June 15:

Ramiro Romero owns an auto upholstery business in Lynwood, has sent three children to college and is a first-time voter in a country in which he hasn't lived for more than 30 years: Mexico.

"As a mexicano, we haven't lost our roots, our culture, and that makes voting a civic necessity," Romero, 56, said one morning at his bustling workshop on Atlantic Avenue.

"We want a prosperous Mexico. We want a Mexico that's not in the top ranks for violence but in the top ranks for its economy, so we won't have to go looking for opportunities to other countries."

Romero, who holds dual citizenship, is among the tens of thousands of Mexicans living abroad who are voting by mail in the July 1 presidential election — a contest being closely watched as the country confronts soaring violence related to the U.S.-backed drug war.

17 June 2012

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's government on Friday halted a controversial mega-resort development in Baja California Sur after environmentalists said it would have threatened a large coral reef in the Sea of Cortes that has rebounded dramatically from years of damage.

The government canceled the proposed Cabo Cortes project by withdrawing provisional permits first granted in 2008 to the Madrid-based company Hansa Baja Investments. President Felipe Calderon said at the presidential residence Los Pinos that the company failed to provide enough proof that the project would not harm the rich biodiversity of the nearby Cabo Pulmo National Park.

The protected marine reserve of more than 17,550 acres -- most of it at sea near Cabo San Lucas -- has become a symbol of environmental renewal after years of overfishing in the area.

"Due to [the project's] magnitude, we needed absolute certainty that no irreversible damage would be generated, and that absolutely certainty, simply and plainly, was not generated," Calderon said.

The Spanish company did not immediately react to the cancellation of the project. Hansa Baja Investments reportedly has been hard-hit by the Eurozone financial crisis.

Nonprofit groups, environmental advocates and researchers in Mexico campaigned heavily to stop the Cancun-size Cabo Cortes development, arguing that the proposed marina and 30,000-room hotel would be built too close to the reserve, one of the largest and most important in the country.

Since the Cabo Pulmo reserve was established in 1995, the total amount of fish rose by more than 460% over a 10-year period, according to a 2011 study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Greenpeace Mexico said in a statement that more than 220,000 citizen signatures opposing the project were delivered to the federal government last week. The group hailed Calderon's decision as a victory but said that it would still press for investigations of authorities in Mexico's environmental agency over the Cabo Cortes development's permit process.

"The Cabo Cortes project was not only unsustainable, it was also illegal," said Greenpeace Mexico Executive Director Patricia Arendar. "Mexico needs accountability, transparency in the authorization of projects of this kind, and guarantees that environmental rights will be respected."

16 June 2012

MEXICO CITY -- The Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo confirmed on Wednesday that she will visit a Mexico City university and meet with members of the nascent student movement in Mexico known as "I am 132."

Vallejo, a popular figure, is among listed participants for a conference on public education that started Wednesday at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, or UAM.

She is scheduled to meet students in the #YoSoy132 movement Thursday at the UAM campus in Xochimilco, in southern Mexico City.

A 24-year-old geography student, Vallejo became internationally known as an early and telegenic leader in the movement calling for education reform in Chile. The demonstrations that began in May 2011 to press for more public funding in higher education have put pressure on the administration of Chilean President Sebastian Piñera.

Mexico's student movement, meanwhile, held another string of large demonstrations across the country on Sunday, along with concurrent, smaller protests by supporters in cities around the world, including Madrid, Chicago and Washington.

Demonstrators are opposed to the possible victory of presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto ofMexico's former ruling party in the July 1 election. The Institutional Revolutionary Party is leading in polls as the vote nears.

Demonstrators have declared themselves nonpartisan, but the "I am 132" movement has buoyed the campaign of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in some polls.

The movement took a hit Monday when a video emerged of students claiming to be #YoSoy132 but who were announcing a split with the group. "I am 132" organizers said the people who appear in the clip were unknown to them and had never been at movement meetings. (One figure in the splinter group told reporters Tuesday that it had only 15 members.)

"These are guys just looking for attention and the news media are giving it to them to weaken the movement," said Ignacio Martinez, a 23-year-old communications student at the Ibero-American University, where protests began against Peña Nieto on May 11.

Meanwhile, as reports of physical confrontations between alleged Peña Nieto supporters and Peña Nieto opponents have trickled into news accounts, Lopez Obrador on Wednesday said during his daily news conference that his campaign did not support violence of any sort.

"We are not in any act of confrontation," said Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor and self-proclaimed pacifist. "We are in peace, peace, peace, peace."

Peña Nieto, former governor of the state of Mexico who has also disavowed any campaign violence, reaffirmed his position Wednesday to not attend an unofficial presidential debate being organized by the "I am 132" movement. The three other presidential candidates have agreed to participate.

"It's clear this is a movement that does not generate conditions for a neutral, impartial meeting," Peña Nieto said during a television interview.

12 June 2012

Tens of thousands of protesters streamed through Mexico's capital and rallied at the Angel of Independence monument Sunday in another large demonstration against the country's mainstream media and the former ruling political party.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, whose rule over Mexico for much of the 20th century was marked by corruption and authoritarianism, is poised to return to power in the July 1 presidential election.

"All the people have just had it up to here that the government manipulates us," said Misael Nava, 28, a native of the state of former Gov. Enrique Peña Nieto of PRI, the leading candidate.

Nava stood among crowds that rallied for up to eight hours against Peña Nieto.

The student-led # YoSoy132 movement, or I Am 132, organized concurrent protests in at least 17 other cities in Mexico as the four presidential candidates prepared to meet for their last official debate Sunday night in Guadalajara. In the race, Peña Nieto is leading by double digits.

Protesters claim the PRI is favored by the media duopoly of Televisa and TV Azteca, which they suspect organized a propaganda campaign against the leftist candidate in the 2006 election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The former Mexico City mayor is running again and moving into second place behind Peña Nieto after demonstrations against the possible return of the PRI began one month ago.

Sunday's demonstrations spread to other sites in the city, including the Televisa studios near downtown. Students in the I Am 132 movement, roused by a contentious appearance by Peña Nieto at a private university, said they were also marking the anniversary of a 1971 student massacre blamed on the then-ruling PRI government.

"I have a son of 11 and a daughter of 9, and I'm here to show them to not be indifferent to what happens in their country," said Regina Soto, who held up home-made signs with her two children.

"They don't want the PRI to win. We want clean elections where we decide who gets to govern us," she said.

Most demonstrators stood by an early pledge in the movement to remain nonpartisan, but the demonstrations have led to slight gains for Lopez Obrador in some polls. The other main candidate, Josefina Vazquez Mota, has dipped to third.

Protesters said they would work to keep the movement past the July 1 election, regardless of who wins.

* Photo: A view of the Paseo de Reforma avenue in central Mexico CIty during Sunday's large demonstration against the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and the major news media in Mexico.

10 June 2012

Writer Daniel Hernandez was already disappointed in US politics when he moved to his parents’ home country of Mexico almost five years ago. Now that he is registered to vote in Mexico for the first time he has found old problems in the political system of his new home.

Go here for the audio file and program of my radio essay for Latino USA with Maria Hinojosa on National Public Radio. Here's Latino USA's news report on the #YoSoy132 movement, with guest journalist Luisa Ortiz Perez. Good stuff.

09 June 2012

It's looking more and more like a two-way race in Mexico's July 1 presidential election. That is, a contest between Mexico's former ruling party and everyone opposing its return.

Four candidates gather Sunday night in Guadalajara for the second and last officially scheduled debate of the campaign. The session offers another chance for one of the trailing contenders to alter the shape of the race.

Polls show the once-reigning Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, comfortably in the lead with its fresh-faced candidate, former Gov. Enrique Peña Nieto. Student demonstrations are planned nationwide to coincide with the debate, potentially raising the stakes. The grass-roots social media movement known as I Am 132 is gaining reach and influence as it has gone after the PRI and big Mexican media companies, especially Televisa, the nation's biggest TV network and the target of accusations that it has sought to manipulate public opinion in Peña Nieto's favor.

Here's an update on the campaign leading into Sunday's debate.

Enrique Peña Nieto

The PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional in Spanish, and pronounced "pree") ruled Mexico for much of the 20th century until it was ousted by voters in 2000 after decades of corruption, scandal and economic crises. This year, it is poised to return to power.

Peña Nieto, former governor of the central state of Mexico, faces two main rivals: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, representing a leftist coalition, and Josefina Vazquez Mota, a conservative. The parties are poles apart ideologically but united in their disdain for the PRI, with histories of struggle against its authoritarian leanings.

The Peña Nieto campaign has been forced to confront corruption allegations against former PRI state governors and accusations that the party shells out cash for favorable polls and media coverage. The party and Peña Nieto's campaign on Friday were denying a newly published report that his office appeared to have paid millions to Televisa after taking the governor's office in 2005, for favorable coverage on TV and in Televisa publications.

Nevertheless, the PRI's campaign has been run smoothly and holds a double-digit lead in most polls.

Its main opponents -- Lopez Obrador's leftist coalition led by the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, and Vazquez Mota's National Action Party, or PAN -- have long ruled out forming a broader alliance to challenge the PRI in the presidential vote. But a grass-roots student-led movement opposed to the PRI has provided a jolt to the race and is a likely factor in Peña Nieto's slight dip in support in several polls.

Though his lead remains strong, analysts note that as many as a quarter of voters say they remain undecided.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador

Lopez Obrador, who barely lost in the 2006 race and never accepted the results, is running again and has moved into second place in most polls.

On Wednesday night, during a tense conversation with panelists of Televisa's "Third Degree" program, Lopez Obrador said calmly that he was sure to "win again" and that his campaign's tracking polls showed he had moved two points ahead of Peña Nieto.

Even if that proves to be a bluff, recent developments are a reminder that Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, commands a formidable base and that he has been boosted by the I Am 132 movement.

Lopez Obrador's opponents are eager to remind voters of his less than flattering image as a polarizing figure. Attack ads against him were rolled out this week, including one by the PAN that doctors a fragment of a recent Lopez Obrador speech to make it seem as if he supports armed revolutions.

Lopez Obrador called the new ads the start of a "dirty war."

Josefina Vazquez Mota

The PAN also has some supporters in the I Am 132 movement. But Vazquez Mota, a former Cabinet member under the two PAN presidencies since 2000, has lost traction overall, slipping to third in the polls.

The first woman to bid for Mexico's presidency from a major party, Vazquez Mota has sought to convince voters she would be a "different" president, but she has so far been unable to connect broadly with female voters.

Perhaps worse, she's taken hits from senior figures in her own party, some of whom appear to be breaking for Peña Nieto.

On Sunday, former PAN President Vicente Fox suggested he would support Peña Nieto and that other party members should do the same. Vazquez Mota's campaign denounced Fox vehemently for the apparent betrayal. Fox, after all, is the man whose victory removed the PRI from power.

A former PAN president also said he would be supporting Peña Nieto.

The Student Factor

The presidential campaign took on a new player May 11, when Peña Nieto was surprised by a tempest of jeers from students during an appearance at the private Ibero-American University in Mexico City. He and PRI leaders then came under fire when they suggested initially that the protest was staged or orchestrated by a rival party.

In reply, 131 Ibero students who participated in the protest recorded themselves holding up their university ID cards or repeating their student ID numbers. The video went viral on social networks and spawned a movement taking its name from a Twitter hashtag, #YoSoy132, or "I am 132."

Counterparts at some 35 universities across Mexico have joined. The students have held demonstrations calling for more transparency in the news media and protesting the PRI's history of corruption and repression. They have also taken aim at the soaring drug-related violence during the PAN's tenure.

The I Am 132 phenomenon has already had an impact on the race. Under pressure, the two dominant networks, Televisa and TV Azteca, agreed to show Sunday's debate on their main channels, after relegating the first debate, on May 6, to secondary channels.

Last week, the students held a "general assembly" on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and, after hours of debate, agreed on a 15-point platform, declaring the movement officially nonpartisan.

Students have called for a third debate between the presidential candidates, to be organized and moderated by the I Am 132 movement. Lopez Obrador, Vazquez Mota and a fourth candidate, Gabriel Quadri, of the fringe New Alliance Party, have agreed to attend. Peña Nieto has not.

Photo: A Mexican university student member of the I Am 132 movement holds a banner in Mexico City on May 31. Credit: Omar Torres/AFP/Getty Images

02 June 2012

LYNWOOD, Calif. -- Immigrants supporting Mexico's formerly long-ruling political party have opened a campaign office in the Los Angeles area for its 2012 presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto.

The office, opened Thursday at a Mexico-themed mall in this suburb, is an unofficial headquarters for the party in Southern California and represents a shift both for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and for the increasingly influential communities of Los Angeles-area immigrants from various regions of Mexico.

Officially the office is for a group calling itself the Committee of Migrants United for Mexico. Leaders said they would be phone-banking with their relatives back home to encourage them to vote for the PRI.

"We opened this office so that any migrant who has a proposal [can] pass it to us, and we pass it" to the presidential candidate, said Roman Cabral, a former migrant-abroad state legislator from Zacatecas state.

"We will have direct communication with Mexico City," he said.

Photographs of Peña Nieto adorn the walls of the mostly bare new office, where tortas and pan de dulce were served for participants and journalists, a party custom.

And just like back in Mexico, the PRI activists wore the party's bright red campaign color and spoke glowingly about Peña Nieto -- who is leading in polls -- and what they described as the party's "regenerated" identity.

The PRI for many years resisted reforms that would have given Mexicans abroad the right to vote. Their new presence in Southern California also reflects a change in the party's ideals and shows that the "new PRI" will pay attention to migrants' needs, activists said.

Yet at the office opening at the suburban Plaza Mexico mall, the PRI members found themselves facing tough questions from local Spanish-language reporters. How could you support the PRI, one reporter asked, if decades of PRI policies and corruption scandals pushed many migrants to come to the United States?

"Why would I vote for the PRI if the PRI was the reason that we came here? Well, I respond, 'Why don't you go back?' It's been 12 years without the PRI and no one's gone back," said Felipe Cabral, also of Zacatecas.

"The last 10 years is when the most migrants came, and that shows the bad work done by other parties," said Mike Gonzalez, an immigrant from Jalisco, referring to President Felipe Calderon's ruling National Action Party, or PAN.

Another reporter asked what the migrant PRI members thought of the grassroots student demonstrations in Mexico against their candidate. Protesters argue that the dominant news network Televisa favors Peña Nieto's candidacy.

"I think Mr. Peña Nieto has won his media power through his good record," migrant Arturo Vega said.

The PRI members said they would propose that, if elected, Peña Nieto open a Cabinet-level ministry for migrant affairs. They said their effort in L.A. was entirely volunteer-based.

Peña Nieto leads by at least 15 points in most polls, ahead of Josefina Vazquez Mota of PAN and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of a three-party leftist coalition.

This year, more than 59,000 Mexicans living abroad requested mail-in ballots for the July 1 vote, electoral officials in Mexico City said.

* Top Photo: Angel Morales, center, and other migrant voters answer questions during the opening of a new office for the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico at the Plaza Mexico mall in Lynwood, May 24, 2012. Credit: Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times

** Bottom Photo: A view of the outside of the office at the Plaza Mexico mall. Credit: Daniel Hernandez